Satyam and Dharmam :

Now, no man can be said to have fully discovered this centre of life because the proof is in the eating of the pudding, as they say. We have the demonstration of the futility of human effort in the unhappiness of mankind as a whole. You are not happy, I am not happy, and no one is happy, for a common cause – namely, that we have not yet been able to find a centre for our thoughts. If the thought of our mind could find a centre to rest which it can take as stable enough to protect it from all danger, then that would be a source of happiness for the mind and for the thought. But we are still searching. For ages we have been searching, but the centre has not yet been found. How is it that for centuries people search and cannot find it? It is because of a wrong methodology employed in this search, an erroneous procedure that has been adopted, and a misconception that has been entertained in our hearts from the beginning, right from childhood, in regard to the characteristic of this centre.




In India’s ancient culture there are two prominent terms which speak a word of wisdom on the entire range of human aspiration and enterprise. Satyam and Dharmam, truth and law – these two terms, which occur originally in the Vedas and in almost all the scriptures of India, tell us what our centre is about, and what also is the possible character or nature of our duty in regard to this Satya, or truth. The centre which we are searching for or seeking is what we call Satya, truth. The truth of things is the centre of things. Our centre is the truth behind us. Our personality is not our truth. We have, most of us, put on a personality which is a camouflage that we are masquerading with for the sake of getting on with the uncontrollable laws that operate outside us.


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